In a quiet corner of the room sits Fenella, surrounded and almost concealed by a fortress of books built on the desk in front of her. At one of the tables are Tilly and Stephen and their various acolytes; I note the blonde curly head turn towards me, offering a smile, but I pretend not to see her, keep myself aimed directly at my friend.
“Have you seen the Head?” I ask, sotto voce, as I scratch at the sides of my throat, trying to get rid of the terrible itching there. She jumps, pulled from her concentration by my question, both hands thumping on the tabletop in fright.
“Don’t you knock?” One of the book towers wobbles and begins a slow slide. She tries to stop it, then gives up and lets the tomes fan out, domino-like, until the final one teeters on the edge and falls. It marks the end of its descent with a noise like a shot that stops the library for a few moments.
Fenella folds her arms and looks at me.
I ask again, “Have you seen the Head?”
“This morning,” she says. “What is wrong with you?”
And she’s right, I’m jumpy, sweating, twitching at the slightest noise, the tiniest hints of something moving in the corner of my eye. There’s still the headache: as if someone is trying to crack my skull open. And I cannot shake the accompanying sense that success will result in a dark river, a black tide flowing out of me. I blink, hard, eyes dry.
“I don’t feel well,” I say. “And…”
She puts a hand on my forehead—the cool flesh is a shock against my hot skin. “Go and lie down. You don’t have any classes this afternoon.”
“Thackeray,” I say, the words becoming harder to force out, the hurt pressing in on my head. “Thackeray and Tilly, were…”
She tilts; the whole room tilts and I can’t figure out why. I wonder that the books aren’t falling from the shelves; then I realise I’m the one who’s on an angle. I’m the one who’s falling. I hit the floor, head bouncing against the polished parquetry.
There’s a burble of noise around me; I see figures looming above, blurring. Beneath my head, I feel a beat. A thudding, ever so gentle, a mere echo of a vibration, a rhythm, a pulse, a song, but it will grow stronger, of that I have no doubt. It travels up me like a tremor, a whisper of motion. It moves me and shakes me and lulls me all at once. I close my eyes, for I have no choice, and everything is blocked out.
The last thing I hear is Fenella swearing at the crowd to stand back and let me have some air. I try to smile, but cannot feel my face.
VI
FEBRUARY 17TH
Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou waitest,
where thou sleepest:
for I shall not be as one turned aside
by the rise and fall of aeons.
Sound, unclear, as if heard through water. I swim up, slowly, ignoring the yearning pain in my bones. Voices. It’s voices: male and female.
All I can feel beneath me now are the soft crisp linens of my bed; no more subtle rhythm, no more gentle beat. Clear-headed at last, but I keep my eyes closed, for they still retain an echo of the ache. And I listen.
“How is she?” Thackeray, subdued.
“The same as she always is at this point.” Fenella, cool. They’ve been arguing.
“No. It seems different—she’s never struggled like this.”
Fenella is silent.
“What if she’s—?”
“You’re an idiot.” Fenella, angry. “She saw you. You can’t just fuck about for the better part of a year. You put us all in danger. We’re not completely invisible here.”
“We’ve been over this already. What does it matter? She’ll be gone soon.”
“We go to all the trouble of choosing, of making each one think they’re special.”
“So? I just made her feel a little bit extra special.”
“Everyone else here is careful. Goes out of their way to keep us all secret and safe.” Her voice drops. “I will tell her, when this one is gone and she’s back.”
“You worry too much, Burrows. Her time is short,” he sneers.
“She won’t need long.”
That shuts him up, then there is a shuffling, his heavy steps moving away, the door opening and closing. I crack an eyelid and see Fenella, hands over her face, shoulders slumped. I know my vision is still wrong because she seems to have only three fingers. She sighs, throws back her shoulders, takes a deep breath. I focus.
She leans over me without really looking at me, touches my face. Five digits, of course; stupidity. I do not react, keep my breathing steady, slow. She steps away and leaves the room.
I wait, counting down seconds, counting down until I feel safe. I sit up, throw back the covers, swing my legs out of bed. Through the window I can see the sky, blue-black, dotted with stars, buttoned-down with a full moon. 11:30 says the bedside clock. I have slept long.
My legs tremble, I straighten. My hands spasm, the base of my skull feels… stretched. I shake my head, leave the room, uncaring that my pink flannel pyjamas are not the best attire for sneaking through corridors.
The dust and darkness are heavy in the Principal’s office. The moonlight streams in and on the broad expanse of the desk I can see a piece of paper. My note. Untouched, unmoved, unread.
Once again, I pull at the drawers, knowing they’ll still be locked. I take the letter opener from its place and jam it into the keyhole, then into the thin space between the bottom of one drawer and the top of another, jiggle it, jemmy it and to my surprise the lower one grinds open with a protest. The fine dark wood splinters, exposing its pale naked inside. The drawer slides on reluctant runners.
There is a sewing-box, a padded embroidered thing, quite large, a silver toggle slid through the loop on the front to keep it closed. I unclasp it and flip it open. Inside, threads. So many threads, all twisted into figures of eight, their middles cinched in by the end of the very same thread. Tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds? So many: black, silver, red, yellow, richest chestnut. On the padded silk inside the lid, an array of needles, sentinels pinned through the fabric, all fine and golden, some thicker than others, fit for all manner of work, for varying thicknesses of material, canvas, skin, hide, what-have-you. I reach in, prick my index finger, watch the blood well and drip onto the pale blue silk, clotting bundles of thread.
I suck on the injured digit and notice, behind the casket, a creamy wad of pages. I draw them forth. Each one has a ragged edge as if torn from a journal. Each one is filled with scribbles, ancient cuneiforms of text, amateurish translations beside those obtuse scratchings:
I am hidden, but lovely, O ye daughters of darkness. They kept him from me. I remember thy love more than life. Let him kiss me with his mouths. Thy name is as fear poured forth. Lead me, I will wait for thee.
Each page dated; I can see a series of different years. How many? Oh, God, how many?
The grandfather clock interrupts me as I kneel there on the floor. It chimes the quarter-hour and I watch the hands move. The office door opens and Tilly’s soft voice, rich with anticipation, a little fear, calls “Doctor Croftmarsh? It’s time.”
“Tilly. Tilly, you have to get away from here.” I scramble up off my knees, try to move towards her at the same time, stumble twice before I stand and manage to get a hand on her arm. The touch is as much to steady me as to underline my point to her. “There’s something going on. We have to go—we’ll go out through the kitchens, no one will see us—”